One problem with wearable fitness trackers: you may not want to wear one when you’ve also got a watch on. This may be especially the case if, like me, you have a tracker not to monitor an aggressive fitness regime, but simply to ensure you don’t spend the entire working day parked on your arse. And you’d like it to be discreet …

COMMENTS

Nice hardware, shame about the app

This seems to apply to most of the Withings 'ecosystem'. I've been using the Pulse and Smart Body Analyser (=WiFi scales) for 18months but the Android app is still, after all that time, almost unusable. They introduced a new 'Timeline' display a little while ago, but that has even worse synchronisation issues than the original Dashboard. If you report any bug their first response is to uninstall and reinstall the app. This loses all your personalisation setting so you have to go through the painful setup all over again. The bug is usually still there afterwards! Also, the web app has its own settings, some of which are reflected in the mobile app, but some have weird side effects. As the reviewer says, "...when app and hardware are both part of the 'product', a weakness in one is a fault in the other."

Re: Activite vs Fitbit Surge

Good question. It isn't about the quantity of sleep per se. It is more about the quality of sleep. Your body/brain go through two distinct phases whilst asleep (a cycle) and most people would look to go through roughly 4 of these cycles in a night. You could get a full 8 hours sleep but, if it turns out your sleep cycles are a little bit longer than 2 hours you might actually be waking up during the 4th cycle (and probably during the dreaming or REM phase, which is regarded as the most important). In which case, you've only really had 3 cycles - or about 6 hours sleep even though you've been asleep for 8 hours and might feel fine. Do that too often and you'll start to build up a sleep "debt" and feel generally shitty.

Note - all of the above is "roughly speaking" as everyone is different. That's why a sleep monitor CAN be a good idea. Have a look at the link below for more detail;

Re: Activite vs Fitbit Surge

All sounds like the sort of thing you'll do a few times and then get bored of. It doesn't really matter what it tells me as I can't get up later because I've got to go to work and get the kids to school. I can't vary my going to bed time too much either for other practical reasons.

I also found 10000 steps a day to be quite hard to achieve. I walk 2km to the train station, another 0.5km to work and then 1km at lunch. I then walk between 1 and 2km in the evening with the dog. According to the two trackers I tried that was usually less than 10000 steps. I simply haven't got time to do more and to be honest I struggle to find time for that.

I watched Horizon's "the truth about exercise" the other day so perhaps this is all a load of rubbish anyway and we ought to be doing intensive work over short periods and walking when we can.

Either way I can assess my walking running routes for distance and don't need a watch or other device for that. I found I used it for about a week and now it sits in the corner and the apps have been removed from my phone.

Re: not for real geeks

Unimpressed

It looks nice, but functionality-wise it seems too expensive for what it can do. I got a Fitbit Charge about a month ago, which works as a watch (show month and day too) and measures more things than the Activité seems to. And I paid $130 (note: US thaler, not sterling pound) :-)

Bulky

Is it just me but I find a watch 36mm wide by what looks to be about 8mm thick bulky and low tech. If I am going to be buying a high tech watch I don't want a vast hunk of plastic and metal. The thinner the better and no wider than is required to suit the purpose.

Is this fashion over function? Maybe the next iphone should have a 5mm deeper body and weigh 200g more. Then again if my phone (actually a nexus 5) was 5mm thicker and had a 3 day battery I would be entirely happy about it.